WordPress Tip for Multiple Themes

Sunday, 4 January 2009, 5:16 pm

If your site makes available multiple themes for users to choose from, remember to include the JavaScript (or any other required code) for any statistical applications that you might be using, such as Mint, Google Analytics, and so forth. I am not sure about the various WordPress statistics plugins, but they may need to be included as well. A good way to check if your stats plugin is tracking data across all themes is to either visit a few pages that you know others aren’t hitting, or else activate each of the alternate themes and check the source code of each one for the required code.

Earlier today, I realized that only several of my most recent themes included the required JavaScript for Mint and Google Analytics. I am now in the process of editing each of the 18 themes available for users at Perishable Press. Haven’t decided on whether or not both statistics apps are needed for all themes, but I will certainly be using at least one of them to keep an eye on everything.

Insane Christmas

Monday, 22 December 2008, 9:47 pm

For as long as I can remember, Christmas has always been a relatively peaceful affair. Sure there’s the usual holiday stress — traffic, shopping, presents, relatives, and all that goes with the preparation of a traditional celebration, but when it’s all said and done, you get to relax and enjoy the peace and harmony of gathering together and basking in the reason for the season: the birth of Christ.

This year, however, the stress factor has been kicked up a few notches, making for a rather insane Christmas if I do say so myself. In addition to the usual holiday chaos, we are currently purchasing a brand new home, and quickly realizing the incredible amount of work involved in the process. If you’ve ever bought a newly built home, you know exactly what I am talking about here.

Plus, as if all the paperwork, inspections, insurance, costs, and anxious anticipation weren’t enough to confound the usual holiday stress, we are also packing up everything, dealing with kids, working full-time jobs, and — beginning on Christmas Eve — moving into our new house.

It certainly is all a great joy and blessing to have such amazing things going on, but combined with the work that I do on the Web — blogging, designing, projects, helping people, and so on — it really becomes all too much rather quickly. We are doing are best to get through everything with our sanity intact, but I have to admit that this is the most insane Christmas I have ever experienced.

New (4G) Blacklist Now in Beta

Monday, 22 December 2008, 9:27 pm

Just a quick note to anyone interested in securing their websites against malicious activity, spam, and other nonsense. Several months after releasing my 3G Blacklist, I have finally begun work on the next incarnation of the blacklist: the 4G Firewall!

The first part of the blacklist is now ready for testing, and I plan on setting it up on Perishable Press within the next few days. While testing on my own site, I thought it would beneficial to also invite a few “beta” testers to run the code on their own site(s) as well.

So, if you have a site that receives its share of malicious attacks, and cracker exploits, drop me a line via the contact form at Perishable Press and I will send you the initial block of HTAccess directives. This version of the Blacklist is looking better than ever, and I look forward to releasing the complete version to the public early in 2009.

Thanks for the Free Traffic and Link Juice

Sunday, 7 December 2008, 1:26 pm

Just wanted to thank the fine folks at fafich.ufmg.br for all the free traffic and link juice. Thanks to their misapplication of my comprehensive canonicalization code, every non-canonical version of their 21,700 indexed pages points directly to my site, Perishable Press. This means that every one of their permalink URLs that is mistyped, lacks the “www” prefix, or contains the superfluous “index.php” file name is directed via permanent redirect directly to the home page of my site.

I have tried contacting the site owner(s) about this situation, but it has been over a week and I have yet to hear anything back. Hopefully, they will take notice soon and correct the issue by properly configuring their htaccess file, but in the meantime, I certainly don’t mind the extra link juice and free traffic! :)

No Plugin Needed for Feed Delay

Monday, 24 November 2008, 10:01 am

I recently saw a WordPress plugin that was designed to delay the publication of your WordPress feed by any specified time interval. While it is a good idea to carefully proofread your content before posting it, a plugin certainly is not required to do so.

As savvy WordPress users already know, WordPress has a built-in post-preview feature that enables authors to view their unpublished content as a published post. This enables authors to do any amount of proofreading and browser checking until they are satisfied with the results.

To do this, simply write your post as usual, and then click on the “Preview this post” button on the right-hand side of the screen. In older versions of WordPress (less than 2.5, I think), you actually need to save (without publishing!) the post first and then re-open it as if to continue editing. You will then see a “Preview »” link sort of hidden (due to poor CSS design) in the upper-right corner near the edit post field. Right-click on that link to open in new tab and you are good to go.

No extra plugin needed! :)